Law Commons^™

You Can't Ask (Or Say) That: The First Amendment And Civil Rights Restrictions On Decisionmaker Speech, Helen L. Norton

Faculty Scholarship

Many antidiscrimination statutes limit speech by employers, landlords, lenders, and other decisionmakers in one or both of two ways: (1) by prohibiting queries soliciting information about an applicant's disability, sexual orientation, marital status, or other protected characteristic; and (2) by proscribing discriminatory advertisements or other expressions of discriminatory preference for applicants based on race, sex, age, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristics.

This Article explores how we might think about these laws for First Amendment purposes. Part I outlines the range of civil rights restrictions on decisionmaker speech, while Part II identifies the antidiscrimination and privacy concerns that drive their …

The Thin Line Between Love And Hate: Why Affinity-Based Securities And Investment Fraud Constitutes A Hate Crime, Lisa M. Fairfax

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the parallels between the prototypical hate crime and affinity fraud—securities and investment fraud that targets identifiable religious, racial and ethnic groups—and asserts that those parallels justify treating affinity fraud as a hate crime.

Some Thoughts On The Law And Politics Of Reparations For Slavery, Calvin R. Massey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Transgender Jurisprudence: Dysphoric Bodies Of Law, Jennifer L. Levi

Faculty Scholarship

This is a book review of Andrew Sharpe's "Transgender Jurisprudence: Dysphoric Bodies of Law." The Author discusses the contribution Sharpe makes to the transgender rights movement as invaluable for two reasons. First, it provides the first in-depth and full-length comprehensive treatment of the topic of transgender jurisprudence, and emerges as the foundational work by which others will be measured. Second, it exposes the homophobia underlying many of the key decisions, particularly in the area of marriage and family law, and provides an important link between the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movements which should not be ignored by activists from …

Protections For Transgender Employees, Jennifer Levi

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses protections for transgender employee rights and how many transgender employees routinely face demotions, unfavorable conditions of employment, and even discriminatory terminations--due not to job-related problems but to employers' discomfort with and animus against transgender people. The Author points out that although courts historically have found transgender people excluded from coverage under certain laws, developing case law supports the arguments of transgender employees who face workplace discrimination.

Minnesota's Sex Offender Commitment Program: Would An Empirically-Based Prevention Policy By More Effective?, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

Minnesota’s sex offender commitment scheme is not just a bad idea; it likely has bad consequences. It is a huge and disproportionate sink for resources that ight be put to more effective use in the fight against sexual violence. Worse, its demand for resources will continue to grow, thus predetermining to a large extent how prevention and treatment dollars are spent. It is very possible that a more rational allocation of these resources would actually prevent more violence than the allocation that is automatically produced by the sex offender commitment scheme. At the very least, the fight against sexual violence …

Exploring White Resistance To Racial Reconciliation In The United States, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Congressional Power To Regulate Sex Discrimination: The Effect Of The Supreme Court's "New Federalism", Calvin R. Massey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Exactly Is Racial Diversity?, Devon W. Carbado, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Federal No Child Left Behind Act And The Post-Desegregation Civil Rights Agenda, James S. Liebman, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

Despite many deficiencies, the No Child Left Behind Act ("NCLB" or "Act") extends to the federal level and diffuses to the states an innovative system of publicly monitored decentralization of school governance known as the "New Accountability." This Article argues that, given background changes in the understanding of effective classroom teaching, accountability systems of the type imposed by the NCLB can enable willing school districts to build the capacity for school-level reform upon which the ultimate improvement of public schooling depends. It claims further that activists can accelerate the reforms and ensure respect for the requirements of racial and economic …

On Discipline And Canon, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

While the title of the panel I participated in was "Why Do We Eat Our Young?", I think I prefer: "On Discipline and Canon," or to rework the title of the panel in the program, "Why Do We Eat Our Girlfriends?"

In my short remarks, I would like to raise a set not of answers, but of questions that over the last year or so a few of us have been discussing outside of our published work. These questions seem apt both for this panel and for this conference. Last November a group of really wonderful women at the University …

From The Ne'er-Do-Well To The Criminal History Category: The Refinement Of The Actuarial Model In Criminal Law, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal law in the United States experienced radical change during the course of the twentieth century. The dawn of the century ushered in an era of individualization of punishment. Drawing on the new science of positive criminology, legal scholars called for diagnosis of the causes of delinquency and for imposition of individualized courses of remedial treatment specifically adapted to these diagnoses. States gradually developed indeterminate sentencing schemes that gave corrections administrators and parole boards wide discretion over treatment and release decisions, and by 1970 every state in the country and the federal government had adopted a system of indeterminate sentencing. …

Adoptions By Lesbian And Gay Parents Must Be Recognized By Sister States Under The Full Faith And Credit Clause Despite Anti-Marriage Statutes That Discriminate Against Same-Sex Couples, Barbara Cox

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reparations For Slavery: A Structure For Discussion And Consideration Of U.S. Litigation Alternatives, David I. Levine

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Law And Economics Of Critical Race Theory, Mitu Gulati, Devon W. Carbado

Faculty Scholarship

Legal academics often perceive law and economics (L&E) and critical race theory (CRT) as oppositional discourses. Using a recently published collection of essays on CRT as a starting point, we argue that the understanding of workplace discrimination can be furthered through a collaboration between L&E and CRT. L&E's strength is in its attention to incentives and norms, specifically its concern with explicating how norms incentivize behavior. Its limitation is that it treats race as exogenous and static. Thus, the literature fails to consider how institutional norms affect, and are affected by, race. To put the point another way, L&E does …

Thinking About Feminism, Social Justice, And The Place Of Feminist Law Journals: A Letter To The Editor, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Dear Editors:

You, like the editors who came before you, have staked a place in an invigorating and challenging conversation about the transformative potential of feminist approaches to social justice.1 As you envision and edit your journal, fundamental questions about the purpose of feminist scholarship and the value of retaining an autonomous space for feminist jurisprudence loom large.

Not surprisingly, The Bluebook will provide little guidance on these topics. Instead, consistent with the feminist enterprise,2 you will need to search out sources, both within and outside of the law school library, to spark your critical thinking. Ideally these will ensure …

A Comment On Grutter And Gratz V. Bollinger, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

Now that the Supreme Court has definitively resolved (at least for a generation) the issue of the constitutionality of affirmative action in American higher education, thereby continuing without major adjustment what has been the practice in our selective colleges and universities for more or less the last thirty years, it is easy to forget how different the United States would have looked in the years ahead if only one vote had shifted to the dissenting side. Just how precipitous and long-lasting the decline in racial and ethnic diversity would have been is a complicated matter, but that it would have …

Emotional Harm In Housing Discrimination Cases: A New Look At A Lingering Problem, Victor M. Goode, Conrad Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

With the United States Supreme Court's condemnation of legal segregation in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and a vigorous civil rights movement that led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the nation entered the beginning of a new era in race relations. This, and future civil rights legislation, would be characterized by the development of a national agenda for ending discrimination and promoting equality. One area that was not included in this initial congressional effort, but later found its way into the legislative agenda, was the subject of housing discrimination. Despite the relatively few debates …

The Shaping Of Chance: Actuarial Models And Criminal Profiling At The Turn Of The Twenty-First Century, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

The turn of the twentieth century marked a new era of individualization in the field of criminal law. Drawing on the new science of positivist criminology, legal scholars called for diagnosis of the causes of delinquence and for imposition of individualized courses of remedial treatment specifically adapted to these individual diagnoses. "[M]odern science recognizes that penal or remedial treatment cannot possibly be indiscriminate and machine-like, but must be adapted to the causes, and to the man as affected by those causes," leading criminal law scholars declared. "Thus the great truth of the present and the future, for criminal science, is …

The Fragile Promise Of Provisionality, James S. Liebman, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

It is a pleasure to address such well-informed, insightful and well-intentioned responses to our Article. Intellectual predispositions and differing assessments of the prospects of reform aside, it is striking that so many participants have firsthand experience of the new model school, the new politics in all their mystery, and even non-court-centric judicial review. It is clear that something is afoot, and not just in academic circles, when observers as different as Diane Ravitch, the critic of Deweyan latitudinarianism, and Gordon Whitman, the community organizer, are both surprised to discover that standardized testing can go hand in hand with individualized education …

A Public Laboratory Dewey Barely Imagined: The Emerging Model Of School Governance And Legal Reform, James S. Liebman, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

The American public school system is in the midst of a vast and promising reform. The core architectural principle of the emergent system is the grant by higher-level authorities – federal government, states, and school districts – to lower level ones of autonomy to pursue the broad goal of improving education. In return, the local entities – schools, districts, and states – provide the higher ones with detailed information about their goals, how they intend to pursue them, and how their performance measures against their expectations. The core substantive commitment of the emergent system is the provision to all students, …

Civil Rights And Civil Liberties: Whose “Rule Of Law”?, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Puppy Love: Bioterrorism, Civil Rights, And Public Health, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Florida has been the state humorists most like to make fun of since the 2000 presidential election, especially when it comes to politics. And humorists are almost the only commentators who can be counted on to tell us the truth about the state of American politics today. When Californians decided to recall their Governor, for example, Conan O'Brien observed: "Yesterday Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he would run for governor of California. The announcement was good news for Florida residents, who now live in the second-flakiest state in the country."' And when more than 200 people filed to run for Governor, Jay …

Race, Civil Rights, And Immigration Law After September 11, 2001, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

This article is part of a symposium on "Migration Regulation Goes Local: The Role of States in U.S. Immigration Policy." Although only time will tell, September 11, 2001 promises to be a watershed in thehistory of the United States. Not long after the tragedy, supporters and critics alike saw the federal government as "pushing the envelope" in restricting civil liberties in the name of national security. This article analyzes the nation's response to the horrific loss of life of September 11 and shows how the centralization ofimmigration power in the hands of the federal government, may exacerbate the civil rights …

Women's Rights: Reframing The Issues For The Future, Ariana Dubler, Anika Rahman, Kathy Rodgers, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

Good morning and welcome, everyone, to our panel on Women's Rights: Refraining the Issues for the Future. I am Kathy Rodgers. I'm from the class of 1973 of Columbia Law School, and I'm looking around this room – this is not what room A and B looked like back then! Everybody has a microphone, which is great, because we hope to have some good interactive discussion with all of you this morning.

I am also, in addition to being a Columbia Law alum, the president of NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund here in New York. For over thirty-two years, …